I motioned for him to back off. Everybody knew the betrothal wouldn't be final until Avigail had received Reuben's gift.
James stared at Reuben sullenly.
Reuben produced the gift dutifully, opening the silken wrapping. It was a gold necklace, very delicate and very beautifully made. It shone with gems. I'd seldom seen such a thing. It might have come from Babylon or from Rome.
“Let me see if the girl is well and able to speak to you,” said my mother. “My lord, drink your wine, and give me leave to talk to her. I'll be back as soon as I can.”
There were muffled noises from the room next to us. Several of the women came in. Reuben rose and so did James. I was already standing.
Hananel looked up expectantly, the light very bright on his slightly scornful and bored face.
Avigail was brought in the door.
She was dressed in a simple bleached woolen tunic and robe, and her hair was beautifully combed.
The women urged her gently forward. Reuben stood before her.
He whispered her name. He held out the silk-wrapped gift with both hands as though it was something fragile that might shatter. “For you, my bride,” he said. “If you will accept.”
Avigail looked up at me. I nodded.
“Go on, you may accept it,” said James.
Avigail received the present and opened the silk. She stared at the necklace. She was silent. She was dazed.
Her eyes locked on those of Reuben of Cana.
I looked down at the grandfather's face. He was transformed. The cold hard look of scorn was broken and dissolved. He stared up at Avigail and his grandson. He said nothing.
It was Reuben who spoke in a halting voice.
“My precious Avigail,” he said. “I've traveled many a mile since I last saw you. I've seen many a wonder and studied in many a school, and wandered to many a place. But through it all, I carried in my heart one most cherished memory with me, and that was of you, Avigail, of you as you sang with the maidens on the road to Jerusalem. And in my dreams, I heard your voice.”
They stared at one another. Avigail's face was smooth, and her eyes soft and large. Then Reuben flushed red and hastily reached for the necklace, slipping it out of the silk in her hands which fluttered to the ground. He opened the clasp and he gestured: Might he put it around her neck?
“Yes,” said my mother.
And my mother took the necklace from him and she closed the clasp at the back of Avigail's neck.
I stepped up and put my hands on the shoulders of Reuben and Avigail.
“Speak to the young man, Avigail,” I said softly. “Let him know what's in your heart.”
Avigail's face softened and heated and her voice came low and full of emotion.
“I am happy, Reuben.” Then her eyes melted. “I've suffered misfortune,” she whispered.
“I know this. . . .”
“I haven't been wise!”
“Avigail,” I whispered. “You are to be a bride now.”
“My young one,” Reuben said. “Who of us is wise in such adversity? What is youth and what is innocence, but treasures that we're soon to lose in the world's trials? That the Good Lord has preserved you for me through my years of foolish roaming, I can give only thanks.”
The women surrounded them, hugging them and patting them, and then they drew Reuben back, and they took Avigail away, to the far end of the house and up the steps.
I looked at Hananel. He was staring at me fixedly. His eyes were cunning, but his look was chastened and faintly sad.
It seemed everyone was on the move now in the room, urging our guests to make ready, if they wanted, for bed in a clean, dry room which had been readied for them, or insisting that they take more wine, or that they have more food, or rest, or whatever it was in the world they should desire.
Hananel kept his eyes on me. He reached up for me. I came round and sat down beside him.
“My lord?” I asked.
“Thank you, Yeshua bar Joseph,” he said, “that you came to my house.”
16
AT LAST OUR GUESTS were securely bedded down in their rooms, on the best rugs we had laid over straw for beds, with the few fine pillows we could gather, and the inevitable brazier of coals, and water should they require it. Of course they claimed it was more than they had ever expected, and we knew it was not, and insisted that we wished we could provide them with silken bedding, and they urged us to go on to sleep, and I came back to the main room where I almost always slept and fell down beside the brazier.
Joseph sat silent as before, gazing at me with thoughtful eyes, and Uncle Cleopas sat staring at the fire and savoring the cup of his wine, sipping from it, murmuring to himself.
I knew a wrenching misery. I knew it as I lay still in the silence and in the shadows, ignoring the coming and settling of my brothers Joseph and Judas. I knew it as vaguely as I was aware that Silas and Levi were there too and Little Cleopas with his wife, Mary.
I knew that Avigail was saved; I knew that somehow her misery was at an end. I knew that Hananel and his grandson Reuben would be good to her all her days. I knew that.
But I also knew that I had given Avigail away to another man, I'd given Avigail away forever.
And a wealth of possibilities now descended on me, possibilities which I'd glimpsed perhaps in the heated moments in the grove when I'd clung to her, possibilities choked off by necessity and decision. Now they came like the whispered taunts given an airy shape passing before my dulled eyes—Avigail, my wife, Avigail and I together with a house of little ones, Avigail and I amid trivial tasks and arbors of trailing vines, in weariness and with soft tender skin, dare one think of that, the brush of lips, yes, and a body crooked snugly against me in the night-to-night dark—ah, the essence of all that would have followed, and could have followed, if I'd taken her as my wife, if I'd done what every man in the village expected of me, what my brothers had expected of me long before the other men, if I'd done what custom and tradition required of me. If I'd done what my heart seemed to want from me.
I didn't want sleep. I feared sleep. I wanted peace, I wanted the day to come so I could walk, I wanted the rain to keep falling so that it would blot out every sound in this room, every spoken word. And why at all at this hour and after so much were they speaking?
I looked up. James stood glowering at me. Beside him stood Cleopas. My mother stood there trying to pull her brother away, and finally James let it out:
“And how are we to provide this bride with proper robes and veils and a canopy and all the attendants of which you so vehemently spoke, to marry such a man as the grandson of Hananel of Cana!” He rose off the balls of his feet in rage. “Tell me, what is it that lies behind your boast, you, who caused this disaster, this very disaster. How could you claim for her a raiment and preparations such as no one in this house could ever give to your sister!” There was a flood of words yet to come.
But I rose to my feet.
My uncle Cleopas spoke gently. “Why couldn't you have married her yourself, my son?” he asked pleadingly. “Who is it that asks this of you, that you don't marry?”
“Oh, he's too good for that,” declared James. “He would do Moses one better and not take a wife; he would do Elijah better and not take a wife. He would live as an Essene but not with the Essenes for he's too good for them. And had it been any other man in that grove with the girl, she'd be ruined. But all know you, no, you would never have touched her.”
He drew in his breath for another rush of words, but I stopped him.
“Before you make yourself positively ill with rage,” I said, “let me ask my mother—bring here, please now, the gifts that were given to me when I was born. Set them here before us.”
“My son, are you certain?”
“I am certain,” I said. I kept my eye on James.
He went to speak and I said:
“Wait.”
She went out directly.
James stood regarding me with cold contempt, read
y at any moment to erupt. My brothers were now grouped about, behind him. My nephews stood watching, and into the room had come Aunt Esther and Mara. Shabi and Isaac and Menachim stood against the wall.
I looked unwaveringly at James.
“I am weary of you, my brother,” I said. “In my heart, I'm weary.”
He narrowed his eyes. He was astonished.
My mother came back. She held a chest which was heavy for her to hold, and Mara and Esther assisted her as she brought it forward and set it down on the floor in front of us.
Decades, it had been hidden away, this chest, ever since our return here from Egypt. James had seen this chest. James knew what it was, but my other brothers had never set eyes on it, as they were the sons of my uncle Cleopas, and they'd been born after me. None of the younger men had ever seen it. Perhaps the boys in the room had never even heard tell of it. Perhaps Mara and Little Mary didn't even know that it existed.
It was a Persian chest, plated in gold and exquisitely decorated with curling vines and pomegranates. Even the handles of the chest were gold. It shone in the light, brilliantly as the gold of Avigail's necklace had shone on her neck.
“It's never enough for you, is it, James!” I said. My voice was low. I struggled against my anger. “Not the angels filling up the night skies over Bethlehem, not the shepherds who came through the stable door to tell my mother and father of the angels' song, no, not enough for you. And not the Magi themselves, the richly clad men from Persia who descended on the narrow streets of Bethlehem with their caravan, brought there by a star that lighted the very Heavens. Not enough for you! Not enough for you that you yourself saw these men put this chest at the foot of my cradle. No, not enough, never enough, no sign ever. Not the words of our blessed cousin Elizabeth, mother of John bar Zechariah, before she died—when she told us all of the words spoken by her husband as he named his son, John, when she told us of the angel who'd come to him. No, not enough. Not even the words of the prophets.”
I stopped. He was frightened. He backed away and my brothers shifted uneasily away from me.
I stepped forward and James stepped back again.
“Well, you are my older brother,” I said, “and you are the head of this family, and I owe you obedience, and I owe you patience. And obedience I have tendered and patience I have tried, and will try again, and, with it all, respect for you, whom I love and have always loved, knowing who you are and what you are, and what you've endured and what we all must endure.”
He was speechless and shaken.
“But now,” I said. “Now hear this.” I reached down and opened the chest. I threw the lid back. I stared at the contents, the glistening alabaster jars, and the great collection of gold coins that it held, nestled in their tapestried box. I lifted the box. I emptied the coins onto the floor. I saw them glittering as they scattered.
“Now hear this,” I said. “This is mine, and was given me at my birth, and I give it now for Avigail's bridal raiment, and for her rings, and for her bracelets and for all the wealth that's been taken from her; I give it for her canopy. I give it for her! And my brother, I tell you now I will not marry. And this—this is my ransom from it!” I pointed to the coins. “My ransom!”
Helplessly, he looked at me. He looked at the scattered coins. Persian coins. Pure gold. The purest gold of which a man can form a coin.
I didn't look down at them again. I'd seen them once long ago. I knew what they looked like; I knew how they felt, what they weighed. I didn't look now. But I saw them shining in the darkness.
My vision was blurred as I looked at James.
“I love you, my brother,” I said. “Let me in peace now!”
His hands hovered, fingers opening uncertainly. He reached out for me.
We stood reaching for each other.
But a knock sounded on the door, an insistent knock, and after it another and another.
From without came the loud voice of Jason. “Yeshua, open to us. Yeshua, open now.”
I hung my head and folded my arms. I looked at my mother and gave her the most weary smile and she clasped my neck with her hand.
Cleopas opened the door.
In, from the crashing downpour, came the Rabbi, under a tent of wool wrappings, and with him Jason, covered in the same way. The door banged in the wind, and the wind gusted through the room, like a beast let loose among us. Cleopas shut the door.
“Yeshua,” said the Rabbi without a word to anyone else standing. “In the name of Heaven, stop it.”
“Stop it?” asked James. “Stop what!”
“The rain, Yeshua!” said the Rabbi earnestly, imploring me, from beneath his shadow hood of wool. “Yeshua, it's an inundation!”
“Yeshua,” said Jason, “the village is going to be washed away. Every cistern, mikvah, jug is full. We're in a lake! Will you look outside? Will you listen to it? Can't you hear it?”
“You want me to pray for it to stop?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the Rabbi. “You prayed for it to start, didn't you?”
“I prayed for weeks as did everyone else,” I said. That was true. Then my thoughts returned to the terrible moment on the open slope. Father, stop this . . . send the rain. “Rabbi,” I said. “Whatever I prayed, it was the Lord Himself who sent the rain to us.”
“Well, that is so, most certainly, my son,” said the Rabbi soothingly, his hands out to clasp mine. “But will you please pray now for the Lord to make the rain stop! I beg you.”
My aunt Esther began to laugh. Slowly Cleopas began to laugh too, but this was low whispering laughter, this, until my aunt Salome joined in, and then Little Mary.
“Silence!” said James. He was still shaking from all that had gone before, but he collected himself, and looked to me. “Yeshua, will you lead us in prayer that the Lord will close up the windows of Heaven now, if it's His will?”
“Get on with it!” declared Jason.
“Be still,” said the Rabbi. “Yeshua, pray.”
I bowed my head. I put them all far from my mind. I cleared my mind of anything that could stand between me and the words I spoke; I put my heart and my breath into them.
“Merciful Lord, Creator of all good things,” I said, “who saved us this day from spilling innocent—.”
“Yeshua! Just pray for it to stop!” Jason cried. “Otherwise every member of this family might as well grab hammer and nails and wood and start building an ark outside because we will all need it!”
Cleopas dissolved into irresistible laughter. The women were muffling their smiles. The children stared aghast.
“May I continue?”
“Pray do before every house melts to ruin,” said Jason.
“Lord in Heaven, if it is Your will, bring this rain to an end.”
The rain stopped.
The pummeling of the roof stopped. The gusting clatter against the shutters stopped. The high whistling sound of the rain hitting the flags outside was gone.
The room was wrapped in uneasy silence. And there came the gurgling of the water running still in the gutters, finding its way down the many pipes, dripping and splashing from the overhangs.
A coolness came over me, a prickling sensation, as if my skin were doubly alive. I felt an emptiness, and then a gradual replenishing of whatever had gone out of me. I sighed, and once again my vision was moist and blurred.
I heard the Rabbi intoning the psalm of thanks. I said the words along with him.
When he had reached the last word, I took up another in the sacred tongue:
“ ‘Let the sea and what fills it resound,’ ” I said, “ ‘and the world and those who dwell in it. Let the rivers clap their hands, the mountains cry out with them in joy, before the Lord who comes, who comes to govern the earth, to govern the world with justice and the peoples with fairness.’ ”
They said it along with me.
I was dizzy now and so tired that I could have dropped where I was. I turned and reached for the wall, and slowly sat down to
the left of the brazier. Joseph sat watching as before.
Finally I looked up. All stood quiet, including the littlest children in the room. The Rabbi was peering down at me gently and wistfully and Jason was marveling.
Then Jason snapped to wakefulness and said with a bow,
“Thank you, Yeshua.”
The Rabbi added his thanks, and so did the others present, one by one.
Then Jason pointed.
“Ah, what is that!” He stared at the gold chest. His eyes moved over the scattered coins that glinted in the dimness.
He gasped with amazement. “So that's the treasure,” he said. “Why, I never really believed it.”
“Come, let's go,” said the Rabbi, pushing him towards the door. “A good night to you, blessed children, and blessings on all under this roof, and again, we thank you.”
Back and forth came the polite whispers, offers of wine, the inevitable demurring, the door opening and closing. The silence. I fell over on my side, my arm for a pillow, and I closed my eyes.
Someone picked up the coins, and put them back in their case. That much I heard. Soft shuffling steps. And then I was drifting downwards, into a safe place, a place where I could be for a little while alone, no matter how many were gathered around me.
17
THE LAND WAS WASHED CLEAN. The creek was brimming and the fields had soaked up the rain and were soon fit for plowing, with time still for a bountiful harvest. The dust no longer choked the living grass and the ancient trees, and the roads though soft and spongy on the first day were by the second quite fine, and all over the unplanted hills there sprang up the inevitable, faithful wildflowers.
Every cistern, mikvah, jug, pitcher, bucket, and barrel in Nazareth and the surrounding towns had been filled with water. And the town bustled with those washing clothing in luxury and gladness. The women went to work with renewed passion in the kitchen gardens.
Of course legend told of many a holy man who could make rain come, and make rain stop, if only he appealed to the Lord, the most famous of which was probably Honi, the Circle Drawer, a Galilean of generations past, but there had been many another.